Tool lets Web services ease into CORBA sites

Seeking to bridge the gap between CORBA data and Web services, Iona
Technologies PLC has brought out the Orbix E2A Web Services Integration Platform
XMLBus 5.4 which includes support for Microsoft's .NET platform, J2EE systems
and IBM MQSeries.

The new release is aimed at corporations with a significant investment in
CORBA-based systems that are planning to use Web services for integration, said
Don Roedner, the Waltham, Mass.-based director of product marketing for Iona. He
said Iona has customers in the financial, telco and wireless markets who view
Web services primarily as enterprise application integration (EAI)
technology.

However, he said that while these companies use CORBA technologies, they
sometimes lack programmers with experience in complex integration software,
which can hamper Web services development projects.

'We're assuming that this version of XMLBus will just as often be put in the
hands of non-CORBA programmers,' Roedner said. 'In fact, it's more likely to be
in the hands of non-CORBA programmers than in the hands of the guys who actually
built the CORBA applications to begin with.'

To address this, he said Iona has added new tools, including an Operation
Flow Designer to help developers who are not 'CORBA savvy' map CORBA systems to
Web services.

While the version number 5.4 would suggest a minor upgrade, Roedner said the
number five is an internal convention for keeping the release in synch with
Dublin, Ireland-based Iona's other products while the 'point four' actually
indicates a major fourth release for XMLBus.

The new release 'also has a real strong -- and now patent pending -- runtime
component that is essentially a container for Web services applications,'
Roedner said. 'It can run by itself or actually be hosted in any number of J2EE
app servers.'